The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s major thoroughbred horse race. Marketed as “the race that stops a nation”, it is a 3, 200 metre race for three-year-olds and over. Conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria, on the first Tuesday in November.

In Shanghai, it is a luncheon held by the Australian Expat Association. It begins at 10am with all the ladies and the men attending in their fine race attire and HATS! The hats are very important.

I attended the Melbourne Cup fours years ago with some Yanlord ladies. This year, Rachael was organizing her Aussie friends and a few American friends. I purchased my feather hat piece in Bangkok. I hand carried it to Phuket and back to Shanghai! The challenge of the day was finding a “race dress” since my closet is full of Mom clothes.

The race begins with champagne, of course. It is a day of drinking and eating, but fun!

Judy had on the perfect “race dress” with flowers at the bottom to match her hat.

The three Americans at our table.

For the Melbourne Cup race, horses were action for the Calcutta. The table pools their rmb to bid for a horse with opening bids at 1, 000rmb. All the money collected today from bidding/raffles/silent auction went to charity. At the event last year, 350, 000rmb ($57, 000) was raised for various charities.

Our table had horse #1…which was not a winner. There is a prize for being last so half way through the race, we were cheering for our horse to be last.

However, our table was a bigger winner for the raffle draw. There were ten prizes for the raffle draw. I bought one ticket since I never win – Judy did the same for the same reason. Judy won a pair of shoes from Mary Ching’s private collection. Both Judy and I are not shoe women, so we laughed as we had no idea WHAT she won. Nicole won two nights at the Peninsula Hotel with spa and dinner. All the prizes on the raffle were expensive give-aways.

It was a fun day “at the races” spent with friends.